Modern business intelligence routinely makes extensive use of customer and transactional data obtained from databases stored in data warehouses. Such business intelligence may typically be obtained by posing an analytical search and/or query to one or more associated relational databases. Intellectual property (IP) intelligence, in particular, is very useful to the competitive advantage of a business entity. The business entity may seek to maximize the value of its IP by investigating and identifying areas of relevant patents for example, “white space” in an industry, where white space is a term generally used to designate one or more technical fields in which little or no IP may exist therefore helping to identify opportunities.
A patent landscape study is a comprehensive analysis of patents and patent applications to benefit business managers, product managers, technical personnel, and patent attorneys. A patent landscape study provides a map with detailed patent activity in specific technology areas that significantly improves the ability to make sound major business decisions. Each patent landscape study may include a comprehensive report and a customized database. The report may include trends and directions in the technology field of interest and includes pivotal information on key technology providers. The database may include essential data on each patent, a description of its importance, an assessment of each invention as either a fundamental discovery or an incremental improvement, and the technical problems it solves. In typical cases, the patents are ranked by relevance to the technology at hand or to the demands of the customer.
However, most of the known analysis tools are inadequate, cumbersome, labor intensive, and cannot perform automated analysis. Also, the known tools cannot perform higher-order analysis. In other words, the tools perform only superficial analysis and require knowledgeable and skilled review and analysis to generate a useful output. Since there is a subjective nature to the analysis, the output can vary depending upon the person performing the searching and refinement of the data. Furthermore, most tools operate in batch mode, so the process itself cannot provide additional information, since it is not transparent to the user.
There is a general need for improved competitive analytics for Intellectual Property. An automated, interactive system and method that is easy to use and can perform a higher-order analysis of patents is also desirable.